Love, beauty, money and your human values…Today, specifically, the North Node’s transition is influenced by the inconjunct (150°) Venus at 0° Aries. ‘Inconjunct’ can be an uncomfortable or quizzical influence.

Healing, wounding, the healer, the wounded… Chiron, the centaur, who heals all but himself, is also considered inconjunct at 27° Pisces, whereas…

Focus, consolidation, reduction, organisation, boundaries, truth, time and karma… Saturn provides a sympathetic (not a word usually associated with Saturn) perspective as it trines (60 deg) the North Node at 27° Sagittarius, which is also where we find…

Treasures of knowledge in the cosmic mind… The Galactic Centre: the point around which our whole galaxy, The Milky Way, turns. It was discovered in Feb 1974, fittingly with the North Node at 27° Sagittarius and Saturn at the South Node.

Mother Earth, Gaia, nurturing and caring through death, transformation as well as (re)birth The goddess Ceres, at 29deg Taurus, squares (90deg) with the North Node. Lastly…

Untainted feminine energy, dutiful, strong and unyielding to no man… The goddess, Vesta, inconjuncts the South Node at 28 deg Cancer

What Might All This Mean?

The North Node stepping into Leo heralds the opportunity to change your direction in life; specifically, in how you shine to influence those around you. But to begin with, it won’t be without its challenges. In the next few days, it will be better to account, especially in close relationships: where you are, how you got here before deciding where you want to be. Wait until Venus moves on, around mid-May before taking action. With Mercury in retrograde, this is a time to review, reflect, restart, renegotiate BUT not start anything new!

Inconjunct Venus asks you to question your values around love and money and adhere to your basic human values. Can you have all? If so how? What might you change?

The South Node in Aquarius asks you step back, detach yourself, and account for the patterns in your childhood (you attracted) which help and hinder you. Who were the greatest influencers in your childhood? (All influence operates in a bandwidth.) How has each influencer helped you? How has each influence hold you back?

If you were to know, ask yourself the same of past-life karmic inheritances.

You’re seeking answers to your future, you’re accounting for where you are, from the past. It may well be quizzical. If so, at least acknowledge that which you don’t know. Knowing you don’t know is a major milestone in finding out.

This can be a time for healing. But for this to occur, acknowledge how you first attracted the wound to be healed. (I call this “sensitive accounting”.) Account for how you did this without blame to those who wounded you. OR are you the wounder? If so, focus on how you can become the healer.

Before starting anything new, focus on what needs to end and transform, to enable this.

Be thorough, organise your ‘personal account’ with yourself: where you are, how you attracted people and events that influenced how you got here and then meditate and contemplate where you want to be. Notice the barriers and step beyond them in your imagination to begin with. Saturn will help you and maybe, just maybe, in doing so you will unearth some cosmic learning on how to move on.

“The Lodges all shall know that I am he

Who searches loins and hearts, to oversee

All works creative, and all works that find

Treasures of knowledge in the cosmic mind;

And I shall give to each his rightful share

Of knowledge, weighing all his works with care.”

From The Message to the Hierarchy of Helios, The Restored New Testament : The Hellenic Fragments…, by James R Bryce

TO SUMMARISE… Spend a week accounting for all the answers you come up with. Reflect on the answers without apportioning blame, neither on others nor yourself. Contemplate how you want to (shine) appear to others. As we move into the latter part of May, take action – one step at a time.

Today at 7.08am BST at its fullest. Not to be confused with with a pink/red/blood moon caused by a lunar eclipse.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the April full moon is known as the Pink Moon because it marked the appearance of a flower called the moss pink, or phlox. That’s likely a Native American tradition because phlox is common in North America and Siberia, as opposed to Europe. It is also called the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and the Fish Moon.

West Pier, Brighton, UK

The Astro Positions

Sun in Aries – the most assertive and aggressive signs, ruled by Mars, the god of war.

Moon in Libra – the sign of relationships and seeking harmony through balanced judgement.

The Sun conjuncts (less than 2 degrees) Eris, the goddess of discord, who magnifies emotional strife, where it’s needed. (Note: she brings the emotion, not the action or reaction to said strife.)

The Sun also conjuncts Uranus (less than 3 degrees), the Che Guevara planet, the god of revolution and unexpected upheaval.

(Note: The recent tragedies in the Middle East coincided with Sun starting to apply its energies to Eris and Uranus.)

AND…

Pluto, at 19 degrees in Capricorn, squares up (mid-point) with the Sun and Moon. Pluto is the god of the underworld: symbolic of death, transformation and rebirth or resurrection.

AND the Moon conjuncts Jupiter; the god of growth: knowledge, mentally, physically, materially, spiritually and in this instance, EMOTIONALLY.

AND the Venus (the goddess of love, beauty and money) in fiery Aries squares up with Saturn (the god of Karma, organisation, boundaries, focus and consolidation) – a tense angle.

ADDED TO WHICH: Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn and (as of yesterday) Mercury are all in retrograde – giving the illusion of going backwards along their orbital path. All encouraging us to retrace and review past steps in our lives.

Indeed, a full moon is a time to RE-flect.

What might you infer from all this…

This is not a good time to start anything new (e.g. a relationship, contract, project and certainly a war – for which there’s never a good time.) Beware of the fractious energies that can be activated by Mars, Eris, Saturn and Pluto. Not forgetting the Sun is in Aries!

The emotional Moon may well be ‘magnified’ by Jupiter. Emotions may run higher: joy becomes ecstasy, warm becomes hot, becomes scorching AND/OR anger turns into rage.

Libra asks you to consider each significant relationship in your life – especially the one you have with yourself. Where is there balance and harmony? Where is there strife? What results as consequence of this strife?

THIS IS a good time to reflect and bring unhelpful habits, patterns and anything (that decreases the relationship’s life force) to an end. If you’re thus suffering internally, give these unhelpful habits zero energy. Instead – acknowledge you’re feelings of strife for what they are and practice persistent patience to allow your (emotional) body to heal itself.

Quick Tool to Deal with Strife: If you feel strong enough…. Every time you feel this strife, imagine putting in a bubble. Then imagine its opposite, serenity, and put that in the bubble too. Give the bubble a good shake and shine light from the base of your spine, up through your backbone, around the back of the skull and out through your Third Eye (like a shepherd’s crook) into the bubble. Shine this light to the count of four on each outbreath, seventeen times.

Overall, this particular Full Moon advises you reflect, reconsider, review and possibly renegotiate over the strife in your relationships. Practice persistent patience. Avoid allowing anger, shame, hurt or fear to control your actions.

I am personally going to wait until at least Mercury passes through its retrograde phase and gets back to where it is now before I start anything major anew.

On a worldwide (aka mundane) scale, this is a time for Messrs Trump and Putin to retrace their steps and renegotiate a lasting peace in the Middle East, indeed worldwide. It is also a bad time for war to kick off (as said earlier, there’s never a good time) as this would be a particularly devastating war for both humanity and the Earth.

(The Foreword to my forthcoming booklet, The Threefold Death – Mindfulness: Wakening to the Law of Reversibility)

The Law of Reversibility

Situations (events and people) can affect your emotional state. The reverse holds true too; inducing that same emotional state will manifest those same events and people into your life.

Manifesting is not attracting. It’s creating something that’s already there, yet unseen, vibration. This is the paradox of duality. For ‘something’ to be present, ‘not-that-something’ also exists, at the same time. For example, when you ask someone to marry you, they may say, “yes” (success) or “no” (not-success). You know the shape of a building because the air around it is not-that-building.

So how can you apply this principle to life and death? Answer: it requires a fundamental reframe.

The opposite of death is not life, it is birth. Life is eternal.Paraphrased from Eckhart Tolle

There is no such thing as death in the traditional sense of its definition. Upon death, the physical body returns to its constituent elements and consciousness leaves the body, unseen, reborn into the vibration it came from. Death and birth are coincidental. You give birth to new levels of consciousness in life by bringing death to, killing, those things that you allow to stop the birthing process. And…

You can only bring death to, or kill, that which you have power over (i.e. the properties of things you own or control): your personality, your feelings, your outlook – and how you perceive, and thus respond to, the information you amass through your five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and taste). You do not have control over the events and people in your life – but you always have control over how you respond to them.

Author’s extract from Defrag your Soul: If you perceive life negatively for a few hours, people will think you’re in a mood. If your negativity lasts a few weeks, others may think that you’re depressed. If your negativity sustains over a longer term, others will define you as someone with a negative personality – or of a negative character.

All that happens is the result of character; the only manner in which the destiny can be changed is to change the character … (and) can be markedly altered in any direction desired.CC Zain

A deeper process of ‘personal alchemy’ is at work…

Strength of character comes not from a life of ease and tranquillity but from a life in which our hearts, minds and sometimes bodies are pitted against forces we do not understand. Paraphrased from The Druid Plant Oracle, by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm

Change in your consciousness is only brought about by changing your character; ergo, changes (preceded by deaths) to certain aspects of your personality and feelings, which in turn are shaped by the framework of how you perceive the information you gather through your five senses. Life, at some level, is thus about opening, as Aldous Huxley so eloquently puts it, the doors of perception AND shaping your character accordingly and consciously.

As you open the doors, you waken to the framework of what-is and what-is-not, the principles of spirit and matter, the Laws of the Light, the framework of truth borne of justice, just-is. It requires focus, imagination, faith in yourself, and a cleansing of the mind.

“All whom I love I teach, but first confute,
Thus from their minds all errors to uproot.
For truth by biased minds is ne’er divined,
Therefore seek wisdom, but first cleanse the mind.”
(From Message to the Hierarchy of Selene, from The Restored New Testament: The Hellenic Fragments…, by James Morgan Pryse)

Otherwise you will not know clearly whether you will manifest what you want or its polar opposite, its duality…

The Paradox of Duality

To know love, for example, you need to know not-love. So learning not-love serves a purpose. You are indirectly learning about love. And you won’t experience love wholly until you complete your learning. Here lies the rub of duality. This is how life works.

So…

Be clear that what you imagine will bring you what your soul seeks. And know that all the things you experience – that you don’t want – serve a purpose.

My forthcoming booklet describes three fundamental deaths (or reframes) to aspects of personality, feelings and perception of what-is and what-is-not – or as the story of Merlin portrays, The Threefold Death.

About top performers: by definition, they are already at the ‘top of the totem pole’. They already set the benchmark, for what is acheivable through exemplary performance, in their respective organisations. They shape the belief systems about what’s acheivable. They thus have potentially far more influence than the management infrastructure who are trying to lead your company to greater success – through wisdom, carrot or stick.

(I’ll use B2B sales as an example, but I could be talking about executive officers, sports professionals, lawyers, managers, consultants, you-name-it.)

Top performers’ challenge to climbing greater heights is two fold…

Top performers may struggle to find assistance from people, more experienced or better than they, to teach or mentor them in their sales performance. And although I can mentor salespeople, that’s not the line I usually go down, apart from maybe suggesting the odd reframe. I don’t mentor so much; I coach.
Mentoring and coaching are completely different and require, by and large, different (but not mutually exclusive) mindsets: expert/directive/intellectual and non-expert/non-directive/emotional – respectively. Top people benefit more from the latter because….

A step change upwards in performance, for them, is not so much an intellectual challenge. It’s emotional. These people are smart. If their challenge was purely intellectual, they would have figured out what to do differently already – and be doing it. What they require, to step up, is someone to help them bypass the emotional blocks (the deepest of which they are unaware of) with which they allow to hold themselves back.

Change is a journey that’s two parts emotional to one part intellectual.

I’ve spent the best part of the last 18 years working with top performers, in global organisations, to help them express how to be 30%+ more effective. They figure the ‘what’ to do differently, to be 30%+ more effective, for themselves as part of the coaching process. What I do is equip them with the emotional framework to go do it – for that is what they require.
[That’s my guarantee, by the way. If you do the coaching, and do all the work assigned on time, you will become 30%+ more effective at whatever you are focusing on.]

Aries, the hot head of the signs ruled by Mars, hosts the moon goddess, Selena, in her full glory, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Not only that, Selena is at her most powerful, bestowing influence from her closest proximity in her eliptic path around the earth.

Passions may well run high tonight, especially if you have your natal sun, moon or rising sign in Aries. The lust-re of Selena will reach its zenith. Tonight is a night for hot love, hot lust but beware you avoid making it a night for blood-lust, metaphorically and literally speaking.

Those of you who have Mars in a prominent position in your birth chart, may well experience his power. Those around you will be subject to this power. Be careful that you avoid falling foul of your false-ego’s lust for martian power. Over exertion will go beyond the outcome you seek – and cause harm.

Reflect over the last six months, since March. Which situations or relationships have arisen to make you angry, resentful, hurt or wounded. Whom do you blame or still carry a grudge toward? Now, at the time of the harvest moon, is time to let these feelings fall to earth. Cast them aside and reap the harvest within.

The Blood Moon specifically facilitates the opportunity to look within and seek the nature of the fear that attracted these situations and relationships. For that is their purpose, to awaken you to the fear (not-love) within.

This is the nature of duality. We know something is wet because its not dry. We know something is oblong because its not curved. We know love by knowing not-love.

And when we see through the murkiness of our fear, we see the light, the love, within. We see more of our true nature. We take a step closer to our purpose in life.

…..opposing the generous and regal Leo in you, whose pride is easily hurt.

Take a big step back a look at the structure of, and emotions in, your life.
How have you developed over the last two weeks?
How have you developed over since January, this year?

Include yourself, in mind, body and spirit….
Emotionally, where or with whom have you received (a balance with) what you give?
Where are you giving too much? Do you do so out of duty, fear or love?
Where are you receiving more than you give? Do you do so out of pleasure or fear?

Take another step back. Look at the big picture in your life. Consider the consequences of your fears. This is a good time (When is it not?) to switch out all the decisions you are making in life out of fear.

An extract from my forthcoming booklet (working title), The Threefold Death: the changes you make to approach inner wakefulness.

Of Spirit Force…

I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume, behind this force, the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.Max Planck, 1917

The future ‘dies’ when it meets the present – which ‘dies’ instantaneously into the past. There is plenty of evidence to prove what has happened in the past. Statisticians, economists and scientists gather evidence to project what will happen in the future. Despite all the evidence, the past no longer ‘is’ and future ‘is not’ yet present.

The only moment that truly ‘is’, is the present. Yet there is no evidence that the present tense exists – by this I mean, as close as scientists get to it, the present tense cannot be experienced through our five senses; it thus cannot be measured. What scientists measure instead is the before and after effects of ultra-micro interactions in time and space: for example, proton collisions, using the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The Present Tense – which cannot be measured directly – is termed by scientists as a singularity point.

According to The Big Bang Theory, the universe started with such a singularity point. We can measure to within a zillionth of a second what happened after its inception, but we are not sure what banged – and the question of ‘why’, what-banged banged, transcends philosophical, religious, mystical, spiritual, and metaphysical domains.

The same holds true for black holes and dark matter. Scientists know of their existence because of the effect they have on things that can be observed and measured. Mathematical theory suggests that time and space collapse into nothing, a singularity point, at the centre of a black hole.

Time and space emanate from singularity points and ultimately return. And what fills that time and space (according to Planck and the ancients) is but a projection of the universal mind – of which you are an essential part. Through your mind you project thoughts, speak words and commit actions. And…

You are governed by The Laws of the Light and The Law of Consequences which, collectively, invoke dharma (Divine will) and karma (consequences).

The Laws of the Light:

When you commit to a journey, in line with your and others’ consciousness needs, at the right time and place, what you need will come your way.

The Law of Consequences:

What you project (do, say and think) out to the universe, returns to you amplified.

You attract, in/from the future, everything that is complete as well as incomplete in your approach to achieving your goals in life.

Completion: When something within is complete; you do, say, think, and feel things borne of the heart – love, light, compassion, patience, enthusiasm, and curiosity. You will have The Laws of the Light with you.

Incompletion: Unchecked, will invoke things you do, say and think not borne of the heart but instead borne of anger, shame, hurt, or fear.

I shall focus primarily on incompletions.

Should you learn and act appropriately from future’s gift (‘present’), you ‘complete your incompletion’. The incompletion unifies with its duality and thus is no longer perceivable by the mind. Zero projection by the mind means ‘it’ no longer exists in time and space. ‘It’, your completed incompletion, dies into the Present Tense, your true nature.

Should you ignore (or remain ignorant of) your incompletion, it travels unacknowledged into the past only to resurface again in (or back to) the future. Why? Because your mind is still projecting this incompletion through your thoughts, words and deeds.

The most common example, I know of, is the troublesome relationships that we invoke, time and time again. Relationships that keep repeating until we learn what we need to learn about ourselves and then ‘do’ something different in our approach. I have fallen foul of this as much as anyone I know.

Incompletions (recap: the inner things in me that attract the outer things I allow to make me feel angry, ashamed, hurt or fearful) keep being reborn in my life until I transcend to become my true nature – the love, light, truth and gnosis: the chokmah or wisdom of the I-am, the Je-suis, the Je-su(i)s within – as one of the standing stones in a circle at Stonehenge. This is my purpose in life.

Although not visible from UK, you can still enjoy the opportunity the Lunar Eclipse brings the whole earth. It begins around 11am BST.

The moon reflects the light of the sun outside and inside, in our emotional world. An eclipse turns the moon dark red which means we can look within and, albeit temporarily, investigate the darkness within.

Libra, the scales of justice, encourages us to judge and bring balance into our lives – the harmony of self.

Justice,’just is’, means assessing what is and what is not for what it is and is not, without condemnation.

Judgement means reflect….

What is it that you think, say and do that makes you feel good? What happens to whom when you think, say or do these things? How do you feel inside? At peace? Healthy? Self-worth? Joy? Love? (Where or to whom could you “spread the love”?)

What is it that you think, say and do that makes you feel not good? What happens to whom when you think, say or do these things? How do you feel inside? Angry, Ashamed? Hurt? Fearful? What would happen instead if you did not think, say or do these things, not – things, nothing?

What is it that you could think, say or do instead that would bring inner peace and harmony? Practise… Patience? Compassion? Mindfulness? Commitment? Faith in self? Enthusiasm? Curiosity?…

‘Judge’ does not mean ‘condemn’. Be ok with your vulnerabilities and dark feelings. Close your eyes, and imagine placing them in a bubble in front of you. Shine light into the bubble. And when your ready, allow the bubble to float into the infinite void of self-forgiveness within.

Image courtesy of, and can be downloaded as a wallpaper from, photographylife.

The transit takes place at 29 degrees, Pisces, the most fantastical of the signs. Pisces brings us both the dreams of the cosmos (truth) and the world of illusion. Neptune, ruler of Pisces, now swims in its vast waters and will continue his journey through Pisces’ constellation for another eleven years. See Neptune Plunges into Pisces, 2012-2026 .

The Pisces/Neptune effect will thus be at its strongest. Furthermore the transit occurs in the last degree of Pisces which is a fractal of all the power and influence of the whole constellation.

The eclipse also precedes the Spring Equinox, the time to break through the surface to the light of summer which can only succeed when the seeds of our actions are rooted in truth.

Another biggy in the sky is Uranus (in Aries) squaring up with Pluto (in Sagittarius). The result is a huge tension between the revolutionary Uranus and the god of the underworld (death and transformation). So if you’ve been feeling the need for some radical change within recently – it’s probably down to Uranus and Pluto making their weight felt.

In summation, this solar eclipse could be far more powerful than we realise – and it heralds a time for change – global and personal. Discernment – between what is (true) and what is not (illusory) – is key.

The magicians of old spoke of the circle (the eternal body) within the square (the physical body). We live in the mother matrix (square) of this earthly realm, within which we find the eternal circle of life and death.

During the eclipse, the eternal circle of the sun is broken and interrupted for a couple of hours by the intervening moon. We lose a part of our connection, temporarily, with the eternal but we can use this opportunity to think and act practically; to change that which is rooted in not-truth (illusion) to truth.

Here’s a wee exercise to complete during the two hour window of opportunity that the solar eclipse brings you. Write down the answers to these questions by hand on notepaper to keep with you over the coming months.

What are all the things that you are doing right now that you feel not-good about after you’ve done them?

What is the logic behind why you do these things? What are the consequences of continuing these actions (or thoughts) in the short, medium and long term?

How do you feel shortly after you’ve been doing these things? List down all the not-good feelings.

How would you prefer to feel instead? List all the good feelings.

What would you be doing differently that would engender these good feelings?

What would be the consequences of doing these different things that would bring you good feelings?

So what is that you commit to stop doing and what do you commit to doing differently instead?

Will you start on or before the Spring Equinox? If your answer is “yes”, do it.

Switch from doing those things that make you feel not-good to things that make you feel good.

Your purpose is more than to succeed. It is to learn and apply the wisdom needed to succeed.

Success is the goal, but life is the time and space that happens in between now and reaching that goal. You attract the future that comes towards you. The future presents you with what remains incomplete right now in your life. The future presents the present with the opportunity to learn about yourself, (conscious and especially sub-conscious sources of anger, hurt, shame and fear) incomplete wisdom – AND apply the wisdom gleaned to release these ‘incompletions’ – completeness. Should you complete what is incomplete, it travels into the past and need not return.

The game of life was understood by the Egyptians in the time of the Ancient Kingdom (pre 3000BCE).

Whatever travels into the past that remains incomplete ‘returns to the future’. Whatever issues (i.e. unlearned or unapplied wisdom) that remain incomplete, be they business or personal, return again and again until you complete them. You know something is incomplete when you have allowed any residual anger, hurt, shame or fear to control your thoughts, deeds or words.

When you start something, complete it.

The Mystique to the Game of Life

In this earthly realm you cannot have anything without having ‘not-that-thing’ to compare it with. This is the nature of duality. For example, you cannot know what ‘wet’ is without knowing what not-wet, ‘dry’, is. Tall/short, wide/narrow, hot/cold, light/dark: anything you come up with has its dual. Some things are directly opposed as such with a continuum of gradualness between them, e.g. cold – warm – hot, negative – neutral – positive. Some things are binary: on/off, male/female, truth/illusion, love/fear.

As you journey through life, who teaches you love? How do you know what love is? You start with a definition of love given to you by your parents. From adolescence onwards you shape that definition through the relationships that come towards you (from the future).

If you listen, relationships tell you what you don’t love about yourself.

The future presents you with what is incomplete in your wisdom of love; the opportunity to discern love from not-love (fear). Whether you choose to learn – and more importantly apply – that wisdom, is up to you.

When you are presented with not-love in a relationship that is precious to you, in an indirect way, you are being given the opportunity to learn to love regardless of what the other person does: real love, unconditional love. The best example of unconditional love, I can think of, is the kind of love a grandparent can have for their grandchild.

Should you choose to apply not-love, i.e. you choose to ignore (not-learn) the wisdom of love, then the ‘opportunity to learn and apply love’ passes into past only to return to the future. You appreciate this when you notice that you attract a series of repeating patterns in relationship after relationship.

The next bit took me a wee while to figure out. It’s subtle. You may want to read it a few times because I didn’t get it first, second or even the third time around.

In the context of this book, let’s say that you’re in love with someone. You define success as having a long term loving and intimate relationship with that person. (Success can be any outcome you want in life by the way, e.g. a big house, a job, health, a sales victory, anything.) Alongside success, in the future, sits not-success (I am deliberately avoiding the f-word).

For example, if you’re going to ask someone to marry you, they may decline. If your outcome is to win a sales campaign, you may lose. The closer you get to the decision, the closer you get to success and not-success. Herein lies the mystique to the law of attraction, the law of reversibility and magic. In order to appreciate this mystique I need to explain life’s purpose. (See Appendix 1 for glossary of terms. You can read all about the aforementioned laws, magic and life’s purpose in my book, Defrag your Soul.)

Your purpose in life is to find, open, become and express your true nature, the ‘real you’, the hu-man (= light being) in you. Outcomes, goals and targets are, by comparison, external things in life that we set out to achieve that we feel will give us a sense of fulfilment or security.

Yet, for example, there is nothing intrinsically of value with money, diamonds or gold. We can’t do anything with these things unless there is common agreement that they are valued by others and can be used to barter for things we want.

Money doesn’t teach us per se about love or light. It does equip us to have a materially comfortable lifestyle but it doesn’t, of itself, do anything for us spiritually. Yet the journey to achieving money (or anything for that matter) is a spiritual journey because life (the future) will present (in every given moment, the present tense) you with what is incomplete in your life – people, events situations that reflect those ‘parts’ within you that stand in the way of you becoming your true nature. You manifest these ‘parts’ in the form of anger, hurt, shame and fear. When you define and go for future success in terms of love, money or wellbeing then not-love, not money, not-wellbeing exists in the future as well.

There is what seems a natural and logical tendency to avoid not-success and this is why and where you attract it.

Let’s get commercial for a paragraph. Take sales for example. Let’s say you’re in a competitive bid to win a sales campaign and the customer has objections, some of which might be hidden, to your proposal. If you attempt to deny the customer’s right to air their objections by ignoring them or arguing with the customer about the fallacy of their logic or perception, you undervalue your bid. If on the other hand you seek out any hidden objection but fear to handle it, (i.e. you fear to… reframe any misperceptions or resolve genuine problems with and counterbalance genuine drawbacks to your proposal) then you allow the objection to take control of the sales situation, i.e. you allow fear to control your actions and that fear can spread to the customer. If you allow fear to seize control, you can end up doing nothing, perhaps like ‘a rabbit caught in headlights’. Your sales proposal may thus be regarded as ‘incomplete’ in the value it offers.

Let’s cover wealth and not-wealth, i.e. poverty (something I was very fearful of for most of my life). Most people I meet fear poverty. When you seek wealth through actions borne of the fear of poverty, you may well succeed. You may earn a vast fortune and distance yourself materially from poverty; by more than you could expect to spend in a lifetime. Do you feel secure? You may well do. Have you released yourself from the fear of poverty? No: if by some chance you lost your fortune, the fear of poverty may well return.

Actions borne of fear, even when hugely successful, do not release that fear. They simply keep that fear in abeyance. The journey to your true nature remains incomplete.

Let’s get back to the relationship you want. If you apply and only apply love, enthusiasm, compassion, patience and completeness to your quest then you are on the right track to success. What do I mean by completeness?

Completeness means acknowledgement of any anger, hurt, shame and fear that the image of not-success presents you. If you attempt to avoid not-success through thoughts, deeds and words borne of anger, hurt, shame or fear; you are denying yourself the opportunity to release these negative emotions; they control you. But they are not the ‘real you’, they are a shadow that hides the ‘real you’ from you – and those who love you and whom you love.

Nor does it serve your life purpose to deny or banish these negative feelings. For you cannot ‘release’ what you do not acknowledge to possess.

Update: Just this last year I have discovered that negative feelings are not there for ‘releasing’ in the sense of ‘let-them-go-elsewhere’. Instead, release them into the void, the space above (and between) the mental and emotional worlds within you and below the supernal you. Instead of the word ‘release’, these days, I prefer to use the term, ‘integrate’.

Customer Value Orientation Matrix

The matrix implies that you may have the opportunity to add value to your sales propositions. The nature of this value may be intellectual and/or emotional. Furthermore, if your customer values ‘you’ both intellectually and emotionally, you meet the basic criteria to form a partnership with your customer. If your customer neither values your intellect nor you/your-organisation as people – then your products and services are probably viewed as not much more than commodities.

Let’s look some more into each of the four quadrants in the Customer Value Orientation Matrix.

Transactional: In this quadrant the individual client tends to place value for money upon the cost of the product and service quality they are buying and little or nothing more. In a commodity sale, given the minimum criteria of quality required, the client will make their decision typically on the lowest cost supplier. They attach neither emotional nor intellectual value on doing business with one vendor over another.

Intellectual: Over and above product and service quality some clients will value a vendor’s intellectual property, i.e. their expertise, wisdom, data and/or whom they know.

Case Study: Intellectual Value – IT Directors’ Network

I once sold worldwide best-practice research to IT Directors as part of a private club subscription. Over and above the value of accessing millions of pounds (£UK) of research, at a small fraction of the cost, many members joined to meet their peers face-to-face. They met informally on a regular basis to discuss ‘hot topics’ of their own choice. Members would share insights into major IT management issues. If nothing more, members shared solace amongst themselves that they all struggled with the same management issues.

Emotional: In the UK, themes such as ‘Buy British’ or ‘our Customer Support is based in the UK’ continue to carry favour with some clients.

I have sold millions of pounds (£UK) worth of contracts by asking the client if they would help me to make or overachieve my sales targets at year end. In each case, I had a very close and trusting relationship with the client. They were willing and happy to bring forward the business simply because I asked for it.

I led a sales and installation project of a huge network of Personal Computers (PCs) to facilitate a new customer service support system for a UK national corporate client. My organisation was awarded Phase 1 of a two phase project. I was told informally that Phase 2 would probably be awarded to a competitor whose product was some 40% cheaper.

The client valued my organisation’s technical know-how and I assembled a top support team to make sure that Phase 1 was commissioned on time and within budget. By the end of our contract, the customer was delighted.

I managed to persuade my management to keep the support team in place, even though our contract for Phase 1 had been fulfilled. I was determined to ensure the complete project was a success. Specifically, I did not attempt to negotiate anything in return for this ‘extra resource’ commitment.

Phase 2 got underway. About half way through and to my complete surprise, I was awarded a further £3M worth of unexpected business. The client-sponsor was “simply delighted” with my organisation’s commitment to the project overall regardless that a competitor was supposed to be supplying the hardware for Phase 2. This was the client-sponsor’s way of saying “thank you”.

Partnership: When a client values doing business with you from both an intellectual and emotional basis, you have the potential to forge a partnership.

A business partnership is to all intensive purposes a marriage between your organisation and your client. You’ll sit together at a common ‘planning table’. Collectively you’ll form ‘one team’. You and your client’s organisation will ideally have a matching hierarchy of values.

The partnership will sustain when it is built on pillars of passion, resonance, security and creativity. The pillars are cemented in trust and as long as their bedrock is sound, pillars can crumble and be rebuilt.

I once engaged with a global apparel manufacturer to ‘measure’ the value its major retailer clients placed on the various products and services it offered. It sold prime marque products at premium prices. It was very successful but had a mismatch of values with one giant retailer in particular.

The retailer placed little or no value on the various add-on services the manufacturer provided, such as: local marketing campaigns, TV advertising, electronic tagging, in-store merchandising and so on. The retailer’s mentality was ‘stack-em-high, sell-em-cheap’; a complete contrast to prime-product retailing. The retailer was more interested in selling the manufacturer’s ‘bin-ends’ and ‘seconds’. And so a deal was eventually cut but the prospect of a partnership never came to fruition. The retailer’s view of all suppliers was totally Transactional .

For more information on forging and sustaining business relationship I refer you to two booklets from my series of Quick Guides to Business…

(This blog is an extract from a forthcoming book I’m writing with the working title, How to be a Friend of the Devil Within)

Three Constituents and their Dualities…

Accept vulnerabilities: as necessary to the human condition. Avoid allowing them to dictate your actions. Avoid denying them. Learning from vulnerability is fundamental to knowing what being invulnerable means. That’s the paradox of duality – you know something is wet because you know it’s not not-wet, i.e. dry.

To understand invulnerability, allow yourself to ‘be ok being vulnerable’. As you learn more about vulnerability (defencelessness), you learn more about ‘not-vulnerabilty’, invulnerability.

Defencelessness becomes your strength – when you learn to apply its wisdom.

Learn to be okay with uncertainty. For example, when you commit to a journey, you may not arrive at your intended destination. Likewise, when you allow yourself to fall in love, that love may be rejected or lost. Learn to avoid trying to control people to adhere to your will. Love is only achieved through choice and freedom and living with the uncertainty that choice and freedom imply. Put another way…

If you want to change something stop trying to control it.

Self-love does not mean that you or life has to be perfect. You were designed to be incomplete. By all means strive to improve yourself or the life you lead AND ‘don’t beat yourself up for being imperfect’. You, your friends and acquaintances, your children and your enemies, none are perfect.

This is what researcher and storyteller, Brené Brown, says about raising children in a generation that has the highest rate of drug dependency, obesity and debt in history…

Our job is to say (to our children), “You know what? You are imperfect, you are wired to struggle – BUT you are worthy of love and belonging”. That’s our job. Show me a generation of children raised like that and we’ll end, I think, the problems we see today.Brené Brown: The Power of Vulnerability

Be clear about your intended outcomes and commit to the journey to achieve them. The outcomes will not necessarily be spiritual. Yet the journey to complete – that which is incomplete (incomplete self-worth, incomplete self-love and incomplete love) – is always spiritual.

Your True Nature Creates Love

Being okay with the three states: vulnerability, uncertainty and imperfection, means that you no longer hold yourself back with emotions (anger, shame, hurt and fear) that stop you from expressing your true nature. Not feeling angry, hurt, ashamed or fearful allows you to embrace these four disabling-emotions’ dualities (enabling-emotions):

1. Not-anger = compassion and patience

2. Not-shame = self-worth and faith-in-self

3. Not-hurt = joy and serenity

4. Not-fear = love.

Your true nature is to…

Create love, moment by moment, through a cocktail of compassion, patience, self worth, faith-in-self, completeness, serenity, and joy – with a twist of enthusiasm and will-power.

Coaching is not mentoring. Coaching is not consulting. Coaching is not training. Coaching is not therapy – but it’s probably more akin to therapy, and the term ‘therapy’ is still struggling to find a foothold in corporate cultures where problems are seen as weaknesses.

Coaching is about helping people to make breakthroughs to improve their business or personal performance. The ‘coachees’ might already be at the top of the ‘performance tree’, they may be struggling, or (like most people) somewhere in between.

My value proposition is hopefully clear and simple. “I will help people improve their performance by 30% or more in a matter of weeks, and in some cases, days.”

My definition of coaching, addresses the issues that inhibits clients from making breakthroughs. These issues are almost always emotional issues and not intellectual issues.

Case Study: Me and My Comfort Zones

In my early years in sales, by and large, I got on very well with clients’ operations managers. When I met or presented to a client’s more senior management, I would do my best to make sure I was structured and grounded my proposals in facts and data. Nonetheless, I often felt nervy and that came across in my body language and in the tonality of my voice. Senior clients would often think to themselves, “Paul does his ground work and thinks things through but he’s uncomfortable at this level. If I’m going to take his proposals up the line I’ll need to involve someone more senior from his company”.

*** End of case study ***

Coaching takes people outside their comfort zone in a safe and secure manner; so that a client is okay if things don’t work out the way they want, the first time around. It provides the client with tools to learn equally from successes and setbacks – especially in the domain of relationships. (For a guide to forging excellent business relationships I refer you to Quick Guide III: How to Bridge the Pillars of Successful Business Relationships.)

I have found that business, and life for that matter, is all about relationships, relationships, relationships.

When there is no-one with the power of veto to stop what you’re trying to achieve, including yourself, then you cannot fail. You succeed.

Mentoring or consulting, on the other hand implies that you are dealing with an expert; someone who has first-hand experience of new areas in your line of business; experience that you do not have. They might, for example, have studied world-class practice in a new business model in which you wish to engage. They will be capable of identifying the gaps between where you are now and where you wish to be. They will be able to customise a business model that meets your precise needs to fill those gaps. They will transfer skills over to you to fill those gaps, so that at some point in time you no longer feel dependent on their input.

The outcomes for both coaching and mentoring/consulting are the same, improved business performance and improved personal skills. Both get you to do things differently, whether those things are old or new. But the processes of achieving improved business performance are different and often complimentary. Coaching primarily addresses the emotional journey (which is still often overlooked) involved in change, whereas consulting/mentoring primarily addresses its intellectual journey.

The two categories, coaching and consulting/mentoring, require different mindsets: non-expert and expert. The two categories each require a different approach as well, directive and non-directive. I’ll explain what I mean by ‘non-expert’ and ‘non-directive’ through the following case study and later, when I define what coaching is and is not, to a prospective client.

Case Study – Top 5 Global IT Firm, Managers as Coaches

I coached a European team of managers who were already equipped with/‘trained-in’ an oft used coaching technique (GROW: Goal, Reality, Options and Way forward). BUT, they were not equipped to help their salespeople ‘grow’ their performance by more than a few percentage points. Going for, say, 30% growth requires a much more profound approach.

It involves taking people though a structured process outside their comfort zone to do some things very differently, often things that in the past, have anxiety associated with them. This level of coaching is not a competence that coaches will pick up in a two/three day training course. It requires that they experience passing though their own anxiety barriers – so that they understand more fully the emotional journey that they’ll subsequently be coaching others through – by taking their own ‘medicine’ first.

Here are testimonies from the sales managers I coached, about what it’s like to be coached and subsequently coach people to increase their sales by over 30%. Some refer to specific tools and techniques which they hadn’t received in their conventional ‘coaching-training’.

Coaching requires a completely different mindset. When I use it the process gets an A* for managing poor performers.

Coaching isn’t an individual session; it takes place over a period of time to get to a solution. Using ‘2nd position’ (how to stand in another person’s shoes) has helped enormously. It’s made me face some of my own demons.

I took the material and applied it rigorously to coaching X. The meeting wasn’t easy! I faced my demons and got on with it. It’s not there yet but the mountain has moved.

I’ve used the ‘Success and Setback Analyses’. (Two tools that, respectively, ‘paint’ both sides of the boundary of, or limits to, the success we create for ourselves.) I’ve overcome my shyness… I feel I’ve moved out of my comfort zone.

I am more rigorous in the ‘Analytical and Process Quadrants’ (a ‘thinking preferences’ analytical tool) and it’s paid off.

I took away the ‘Being at my peak’ tool from our session and used it – it’s brilliant.

The ‘Being at my peak’ tool helps me synchronise with people.

I am more effective in how I use my time and am more prepared for important meetings.

First two sessions were particularly useful. I would not have gotten through that month without the self management tool.

When I do follow the coaching process it works and it fails (I fail???) when I don’t.

This team of sales managers, in a Top 5 Global IT Company, went on to receive an award for being the top performing sales branch across Europe within six months of participating in this endeavour.

*** End of case study ***

Note that, in the case study above, the managers focused on taking themselves (and thus learn how to lead others to do the same) outside their comfort zones. In the subsequent coaching of their people, the managers specifically did not focus on directing their coachees what to do – even though previously, the managers all had successful careers in sales. Instead, the managers coached their direct reports to explore the space beyond their ‘boundaries of current success’.

Take a few moments to ‘harvest’ in all the new and enabling habits and developments in your inner world over the last 12 months.

Pluto in Capricorn has finished its back-tracking and now moves direct in the sky again. Your ‘digging up of old ground’ is now over. To the ancients (and hippies), ‘dig’ means think, see, get-it. Did you, can you, dig it?

Take stock as Pluto moves forward. Which lingering thoughts and habits no longer serve a useful purpose. Review those that you now wish to lay to rest.

Harvest: celebrate as you acknowledge the new and bid farewell to the old.

How can you bring more balance, truth and justice to your worlds, both outer and inner? The New Moon in Libra and Pluto offers you the opportunity to transform and begin anew.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.Jon Kabat-Zinn

Allow me to add my own business related definition.

Mindfulness is responding in the present moment without reacting through anger, shame, hurt or (the most likely feeling) fear. Instead it’s about having faith-in-self to use your intuition to respond with passion, curiosity to learn, composure, patience, compassion, harmony, and timing to complete whatever is incomplete in your approach to business relationships.

Mindfulness Approach

Avoid both panicking and reacting out of anger, shame, hurt, and fear – instead, under-react.

Create harmony and resonance to nurture The Master Mind.

A Master Mind may be created through the bringing together or blending, in a spirit of perfect harmony, of two or more minds. Out of this harmonious blending the chemistry of the mind creates a third mind which be appropriated and used by one or all of the individual minds.
from The Law of Success, Napoleon Hill

Complete incompletions (when the future presents them to you and in the past you may have reacted negatively) to time.

Then, with these intentions, actions and qualities you apply…

The Mystique

You will induce everything that’s incomplete in your approach to your business relationship. This is the future’s gift to the present moment. You are given the opportunity to rise above anger, shame, hurt, and fear (borne of the past tense).

When you complete anything in your business approach that is incomplete, it travels into the past and need never return. If you react negatively, i.e. it remains incomplete, it travels into the past before returning to the future – so that you attract the same source of anger, shame, hurt, and fear once again.

The goals of nurturing healthy business relationships may be financial success and kudos but these things are not the purpose.

The real purpose of any relationship, business or otherwise, is the development of self (consciousness) to be the very best at what you do.

When you achieve the above, the goals and purpose become one. You cannot fail because there is no one better and you have no fear of not-success – because…

The Mystique
Genuinely having no fear tells you that not-success no longer exists.

There’s a corollary to this. To release your fear you need to approach not-success. Which is why I encourage you to…

A subset of an exercise, on building outcomes for a relationship, from my book…

Pick a relationship you’re in, business or personal…

Bring into focus how your relationship has been of late. Answer and write down the answers to the following questions and responses to instructions…

Give yourself a score of 0 to 10, out of 10, for level of satisfaction with the relationship where 10 equates to 100% – “The relationship is exactly how I want it to be”, 5 equates to “Half and half” or “So so”, 0 equates to “Not at all” and so on.

What has been your input to making the relationship how you want it to be?

Give yourself a score of 0 to 10, out of 10, for your level of commitment to the relationship where 10 equates to 100%, 5 equates to 50%, 0 equates to nothing at all and so on.

Track your level of commitment to the relationship on a weekly basis.

You raise your level of commitment by raising how much (energy) you give to and receive from the relationship materially, mentally, emotionally and spiritually – as long as what you give or receive is not borne of anger, hurt, shame or fear.

The relationship is in balance when you receive the same amount of ‘energy’ as you give.

The relationship gets to exactly where both parties want it to be when both rate their satisfaction with it as a ‘10’. A ‘10 all round’ is where both parties are fully committed to the relationship, they both give and receive 100% which means they are both 100% satisfied.

The Mystique to the Game of Life(and Unrequited Love)

#Mindfulness in Relationships Series, No 1

Have you ever loved someone so dearly and have that love not returned? The other person shares everything apart from their love. They refuse to surrender themselves to the process of love; the unconditional surrender of freedom to the commitment that love requires.

Have you ever felt sick to the stomach over unrequited love?

Have you ever yearned in your heart or loins for someone when your head is telling you…

“This is absolutely the wrong partner for you”?

“Bottom line, she/he just doesn’t fancy you”?

“You and him/her, it’s never going to happen”?

Or something like

“She/he simply doesn’t love you the way you love her/him”?

Your head judges, your loins desire sexual fulfilment and your heart seeks to share love. I call this the Head, Heart and Loins dynamics of a relationship. When all three are aligned, within and between partners, their relationship is probably in good shape to meet the outcomes they seek. (The same holds true for a personal friendship whether there is a sexual element to that friendship or not.) I speak neither of good nor bad, nor moralise. I speak of the process of achieving a purpose through the journey to the goals you set for the relationship, be those goals profound or for short term recreation.

Mindfulness, sometimes referred to as being present in the moment, is the process of creatinglove, enthusiasm, compassion, patience and completenessin the moment (by moment) – regardless of whether these vibrations are returned or not. It takes mindfulness to fulfil a relationship’s true purpose, which curiously can be achieved whether the goals are achieved or not.

For example, in movies and songs I’ve heard the phrase, “You complete me”. Well if someone’s purpose is to become complete and they set a goal to find someone who completes them – what happens should they achieve completeness? They no longer need someone else for that purpose.

Other people don’t complete you. You find ‘completeness’ through the journey to ‘completeness’; you find ‘oneness’.

1. Clarify your outcomes for the meeting in hand and how you want the relationship with the person to develop, meeting by meeting, one step at a time. Moderate performers focus less on the latter dimension.

2. Be mindful of the frame of the mindyou want to be in and that any meeting (is hopefully a meeting of minds) is ultimately about helping everyone present to frame a congruent viewpoint of what needs to be done.

3. Prepare your strategy, primarily so that you allow yourself to get in the frame of mind you want to be.

Research I’ve come across and my own experience shows that the most important thing you take into a meeting is your frame of mind followed by being clear about the outcomes you seek. Having a strategy is important but, once the meeting has started, it’s factors ‘2’ and ‘1’ above (and in that order) that will determine most how you ‘handle any curve balls thrown your way’.

Your outlook in life goes hand in hand with your personality. Personality is a long term habit. A habit is a long term mood. A mood is a long term feeling. So when you feel good and stay feeling good, you shape your outlook for the better. Do and say what feels good. If what you’re about to do doesn’t feel good, don’t do it!

Recent Testimonials…

"...excellent (sales) training with my guys. What have you done to them? Outstanding...."- Graham Hill, CEO, Verbatim, The Phone Answering Service. Aug 2015.
_____________________
"Paul C Burr is always worth reading. He is erudite, experienced and thought provoking. Highly recommended!" - Nigel Temple, CEO, Marketing Compass, http://www.marketingcompass.co.uk/
_____________________
"For The Love of Lilith, it's a great book !!
I read it from the end to middle then back to the beginning to the middle. This way worked for me. But I am always going back on it when my intuition requests it." - Gabi, London
_____________________
(After 'clearing of fears that hold you back'.) "Thanks to you, I've been awarded a government grant for my project. This week has been amazing. You're not just a creator; you're a deliberate creator. Keep sending those vibrations and witness magical appearances." - Jonathan Buffong, Author
_____________________
About Quick Guide: How Top Salespeople Sell, "... a must read for both novice and experienced salespeople..." - Chiahou Zhang, Author
_____________________
About Quick Guide: How Top Salespeople Sell, “I work for a large American IT company, and can say this is a hugely powerful book to articulate what is required to get to Board level. To really understand what the CEO and C level executive summarise as valuable and impactful, and in a condensed easy-to-digest format, is phenomenal. I find Paul C Burr's style of writing easier to digest and apply in any sales situation; it crystallises where the true business value add is delivered and how you really have strategic partnerships. I have just got number 2 book and look forward to reading this with excitement - which is saying something as my concentration span can be limited. Thank you.” - Amy Lambkin, Amazon review
_____________________
About Quick Guide: How Top Salespeople Sell, “I loved it... it was great. I’ve encouraged many of my directors to buy a copy as it’s very pertinent to my company” - paraphrased from a top performing B2B salesperson for a global IT Services organisation.
___________________________
"Letting go of fear and negativity, I feel like I am now seeing everything in glorious technicolour, have been given the space to dream and together with reciting the affirmations, I feel wonderful :-) "
Sameera de Silva, London
___________________________
"I would like to thank Paul for sharing his impressive skills and enabling me to finally connect, and disconnect, with the last thread of the old me. His etheric cleansing process is quick and easy and allows for instant access to the valuable information that empowers you to create the clearing and changes most required. I would recommend this process to absolutely anyone on a spiritual path and to individuals caught on the hamster wheel of life, where little progress is seen for the amount of effort put in. Paul's cleansing is precise and swiftly creates the shift you've battled to create for yourself."
Anna Pink
____________________________
Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return: "One of the best books I have read & worked with...."
Ytje Whiteside
____________________________
"Your coaching took my life to another dimension and I live with my head high because of you.Thank you."
Charles Burton, Personal Trainer, Dancer, European Amateur Natural Bodybuilding Champion
____________________________
“Paul, Thank you for your inspiring, in-depth and highly informative session last week, you taught me to unblock all my inner fears and to know why they were there in the first place. You are a calm influence, and it was your confidence which inspired me so much, as you are not at all egoistic in your guidance. You have shown me the side of myself I always wanted to greet, but didn’t believe was there.

You gave me the greatest gift I could ever have received which is to know my own being, and this is why I will always be grateful, and never forget our work last week. I now have found the path to not only happiness, but wisdom too. They say happy is the wise man, and I might add happy is this wise woman, through meeting a wise man, thank you again.”
Georgie Shellis, Harrow
______________________________________

Money barely represents what a single session is worth."
Naomi, Hove
______________________________________

“I cannot echo enough what Naomi in Hove says ” Money barely represents what a single session is worth”. What you have done for me has literally changed my life with it’s amazing instant and personalised affect. My physical pain after one week of the session has been halved, so impressive that my Osteopath noticed it, my back less rigid for instance. And as for my formerly traumatic life, well now I understand my purpose, why things happened in childhood etc. I know feel like a sea bird observing its life, perched high on a cliff top, and like that bird, I feel that I have the entire navigational control of my life. For the first time I might add in forty two years so far! Thank you Paul, immensely,”
Emma Andrews – Brighton
______________________________________

"I would never have expected it but after 10 years of emotional dependence, I am now totally not bothered by it, this is amazing!”
Anna, London
_______________________________________

“I already feel very differently. It can be hard to come to terms with change when it's not what you want, even though you know resistance is futile, but now I can see where I'm headed, it's easier to accept that the change is already in progress and that it's a good thing, thanks again.”
Gemma (via telephone), London
_______________________________________

This review is from: Learn to Love & Be Loved in Return: Making Relationships Last (Paperback)
This is a book about much more than romantic relationships. It is written with wonderful honesty and sincerity about love, the breakdown of relationships and how we relate to one another. It is a book that provides great insights into our own behaviour, as well as how we relate to others. It immensely readable, and I'm finding myself dipping into it over and over again for the many ideas, exercises and insights within its covers. Highly recommended whether you are in a relationship, just starting one, or looking for a relationship that will last.
_____________________________________

Paul’s engaging style and personable character perfectly suit professional coaching. I have completed a recent programme. My performance, at work, has gone from strength to strength. I am now equipped with the tools to take me to previously unimagined business heights. Thank you Paul!

Paul’s genius for business coaching helped me get clarity on a number of issues very quickly. I trust Paul as my coach. I appreciate his honesty and business expertise. In particular, I really value Paul’s flexibility in stepping into the role of a mentor, when he can see the benefit of doing so.
Is there any point in me saying that Paul comes highly recommended?